


Doctor Who-Mayfly Empire: BELOVED

by ThreadbareT



Series: Doctor Who Mayfly Empire [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Non-Canonical Companions, Non-Canonical Villains.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 08:08:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19459885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThreadbareT/pseuds/ThreadbareT
Summary: When a promising pre-med student abandons her life to join a strange commune known as the Beloved, the Private Eye sent to find her is murdered in mysterious circumstances. The Doctor takes the case, and recruits Kelly and Dusk to aid him.Who is the myserious Mister Scarjester, and what is the terrible power he holds over those enthralled to him?





	Doctor Who-Mayfly Empire: BELOVED

PRELUDE  
The silver car bounced down the dusty track, into the valley, flanked on either side by rolling hills, blanketed in long grass and wildflowers.  
The Retreat was set deep in countryside, the stained-glass dome catching the sun and glowing like fire, the barrack houses and other buildings scattered amongst the lawns and gardens. Several layers of chain link fence surrounded the compound, sealing it off from the meadows and woodland.  
Kramer pulled to a stop at the gatehouse.  
Two of the prettiest people that Kramer had ever seen were standing guard over the barrier, in the shelter of their hut. The guy was tall, square jawed and athletic, with blonde hair and eyes so dark they were almost black. The girl was smaller, slighter, and younger, maybe eighteen, little more than a kid, pretty in a wholesome, cheerleader kind of way. Both wore the uniform of the Retreat: Denim trousers, a denim shirt, a bright smile and vacant expression.  
Kramer was neither young nor pretty. He was flat nosed, blunt featured, and haggard. A graduate of the school of hard knocks, who wore his qualifications on his features.  
The kids approached the car. As they stepped out of the hut, Kramer noted the pair of shotguns in the corner, ready for use.  
Kramer showed his PI credentials, and looked at the kids. “My name is Kramer. I’m looking for a girl called Lisa Kemble.”  
“Sorry,” the girl said with ersatz cheer, and a big, bright, paper thin smile. “This is a private retreat, and those who have come here, ask you to respect their desire for quiet contemplation.”  
“Her family are worried,” Kramer said. “Her parents are worried she’s been caught up in the sort of thing you see on TV, you know? A little girl stolen by a cult and…”  
“We,” the pair announced loudly, in unison, “are not a cult!”  
“Well, I know that!” Kramer said, with a theatrical smile. “But she’s gone given her parents a scare, dropping out of college without warning and cutting all contact. They just want to hear from her that she is happy, and doing this for herself.”  
The girl nodded. “We ask that you respect her desire for…”  
“Look,” Kramer said, softly. “I’m trying to do just that. If I go back and tell her I couldn’t even get a foot in the door, and there were guards at the door, armed for bear, with shotguns, her parents are just going to worry, and go to the FBI, thinking she’s been kidnapped. I don’t want that. It would be too much of a disturbance. Right?” He tried to sweeten the idea with his sweetest smile. “Give a guy an easy life, will you?”  
The kids’ expressions went limp for a few moments, as they thought about it, then, in unison their smiles brightened again.  
“Please,” the girl said, “report to the main entrance of the stained-glass building, Mister Scarjester will meet you there.”  
Kramer wound up his window and, once the barrier had raised, followed the track into the retreat past the many layers of wire fencing. “Scarjester? Yeah, that sounds good,” he muttered under his breath, in a sour tone.  
He parked in the gravel lot by one of the gardens, and walked up the winding path, between raised flowerbeds and trickling water features, to the dome. On his way he passed a number of students, none of them past the age of thirty, most of them under twenty, all bright eyed, healthy, and walking in pairs, one man and one woman, arm in arm, wearing his and her smiles.  
Maybe, Kramer pondered, these is a clinic for rehabilitating models from clothing catalogues back into the real world, and ween them off those forced, petroleum jelly smiles.  
He set the camera on his phone recording, and slipped it in his breast pocket, where it could film everything he saw.  
The doors of the dome hissed open, and Kramer stepped out of the merciless Californian heat, into the dry, frigid atmosphere. The dome was full of echoes and the distant melody of windchimes. The plain white floor was painted in a rainbow of colours from the stained irregular pattern of green, blue, purples and reds that formed the outer wall of the dome. The interior walls were of stained glass too, frosted to obscure what happened behind them. The glass curved and oozed in organic shapes, without doors, the doorways all circular, at odd angles.  
Kramer crept over to the nearest portal. On the other side was a vast cathedral sized room, in which dozens of pairs of the students sat crossed legged, staring upwards, in blissful meditation, at the dangling structure of hundreds of crystals and beads, suspended by fine wire, turning slowly in the slight movements of the air, their patterns of reflections ever changing.  
It was peaceful, with an air of serenity. Kramer could have lost himself in the pattern for hours.  
“Mister Kramer?” A sharp, nasal voice enquired.  
Kramer landed back in reality with a bump. He turned, and found a tall, handsome young man, with a full beard and a mane of hair so blonde it was almost silver, dressed in a black hoodie and tight black jeans, looming over him.  
Scarjester smiled amiably at Kramer. “You are looking for one of my students?”  
As if on cue Lisa Kemble stepped from one of the circular doorways. She was skinnier than in her photographs, wearing more makeup, but making it look more natural, her hair braided back. Her uniform was little big, hanging baggy about her curves. She smiled at Kramer.  
“I didn’t mean to scare my parents,” she said. “Please, if you could apologise to them, I would be grateful.”  
“You know,” Kramer said, flicking out his phone, and turning off the camera, “I think you should tell them yourself, and set their mind at ease.” He thumbed a number. “Mister Kemble?”  
“Yes,” Kemble said over the line.  
“I am going to pass the phone to your daughter sir.” Kramer held out the phone.  
Lisa glanced at Scarjester, and didn’t take the phone, until he smiled at her. She lifted it to her ear, and smiled. “Dad?”  
She walked a little distance away, and spoke in a hushed tone.  
Kramer raised an eyebrow at Scarjester.  
The young man stared back at him, with a palpable intensity to his gaze.  
Lisa handed back the phone.  
“Sir,” Kramer said. “Are you satisfied?”  
“Yes,” Kemble said.  
“Very good, Sir,” Kramer said, and cut off the line. He tucked his phone back into his pocket, and gave Lisa a warm look. “I am very sorry for disturbing you. I am sure you can understand your parent’s concerns. Mister Scarjester, thank you.”  
Although Kramer was not escorted from the building, he was keenly aware of the pair of students who were ten paces behind him until he reached his car. They stood and watched the car drive all the way to the gate.  
As the gate closed behind him, Kramer let out a breath of relief, and pressed his foot on the accelerator. He wanted to put as much distance between himself and the Retreat as possible.  
*  
Isaac Kemble stood in a stylish, modern office in San Francisco, with a view over the rooftops and hills, to the bay, and the azure sea beyond. His fingers trembled as he held the phone. He was round faced, smart, and friendly, in a tailored suit.  
“Was it her?” Julia, his red headed, stern faced wife asked.  
Isaac nodded.  
“Is she safe?” Julia asked, hopeful.  
Isaac looked at her. “She didn’t say she loved me, or to give you a kiss.”  
Julia looked away. “She didn’t? Can Kramer do anything else?”  
Isaac sighed. “We can but ask.”  
“Isaac,” Julia said, softly, “you know, there is somebody else I could ask. So we could be sure?”  
Isaac nodded. “Okay. Speak to your Doctor.”  
*  
Kramer sped down the lonely country highway, his jaw set, his knuckles white on the wheel. The pair of kids who stepped into the road seemed to do so from nowhere, emerging from a shimmer of heat, standing to attention on the back-top with parade ground rigidity.  
Kramer slammed on the brakes and braced himself as the car squealed and slid to a halt, just inches from the kids. One was Lisa, the other a refined young man with dark chocolate skin and a shaven scalp. They held hands, and wore plastic smiles.  
Kramer let out a breath, and waited for his heart to stop mincing itself against his ribs. He gasped and tried to pry his fingers from the wheel.  
Lisa and her partner moved in unison, raising their palms at Kramer and closing their eyes, their smiles flattening into looks of concentration.  
An incoherent blizzard of deafening white noise filled the car, driving nails into Kramer’s head. He winced in sudden pain, and groped for his door handle. He pulled on it, but the door wouldn’t open.  
The light from outside the car faded away. An impossible darkness, thick with shadows, bled out of the noise and saturated the car. It sucked away the heat of the day, until the cold of the air burned his lungs, and turned his breath to silver wisps.   
There was something in the darkness behind him. Something Kramer could only see in the corner of his eye. Something big, with eyes that glowed red, breath that smelt of rotting flesh, and teeth that glistened in the darkness.  
Kramer didn’t have time to scream, before those teeth closed about his throat with a snap of movement.  
  
ONE  
The back door was open when Kelly shuffled downstairs, her hair a mess, and her face still longing for five more minutes on the snooze button. Her baggy tee and pyjama shorts ruffled and rumpled.  
It wasn’t until she was swallowing a handful of pills with a cup of coffee that Kelly woke up enough to realise that the jug had already been full and warm. At last she noticed the open back door, and the pale, gangly figure stood on the steps of her stoop, watching the sprinklers stutter and whir over her lawn and flowerbeds.  
Dusk had that bright, mesmerised smile that found wonder in every new morning.  
Kelly swallowed her pills, checked her breath in a cupped hand, and her appearance in one of the pans. She ran her fingers through her tangle of hair, straightened her clothes, and tried on three smiles, before she took her coffee out onto the stoop.  
“Good morning,” Dusk said, with one of his smiles.  
“Hey,” she said. “You look happy.”  
He gestured at the sky. “I haven’t seen a sky so blue before.”  
“No?” Kelly leant on the railing behind him. “And yesterday you hadn’t seen a sun so bright, and the day before you were amazed by my bird feeder.”  
“It is not like the Spire,” he said, his cheeks colouring a little, his voice breathy, “or the battlefields.”  
Kelly stroked his arm through his long sleeved tee. “You will get used to it.”  
“Is today a church day?” He asked.  
“No.” Kelly yawned. “Today is a work day.”  
He smiled. “I can see your work?”  
Kelly thought for a moment. She wasn’t so sure she should be letting Dusk get lost on what, was for him at least, an alien world, unsupervised, just yet. His life seemed to flip-flop from awestruck wonder (exhibit A- yesterdays absolute bewilderment at supermarkets, laundry, and the contents of her laptop) to… distrust of how safe he was (exhibit B- the times he had flinched when he realised his gas mask was not in easy reach, and the number of times in the night he woke with a start, and paced around the house to ensure the doors were locked, and worst of all, the moments she caught him staring into space, remembering some horror he had no words for).  
She could keep an eye on him at her aunt’s shop, and maybe, just maybe, he could learn a little about the world, so he didn’t look so…well… alien.  
“Sure,” she said, her smile warming her cheeks. She gave his arm a gentle squeeze He might have been gangly, but there was some iron rope muscles taut beneath his cheap tee.  
“I will need to find a job,” Dusk said. “I will have to find papers. And… a place of my own?”  
“Hey.” Kelly shook her head. “One step at a time.”  
They shared a smile, and both turned to watch the garden.  
“You know, in the mornings, they have news on the TV,” Kelly said. “Or cartoons.”  
“Really?” Dusk asked, with the same look as a puppy being shown a ball.  
*  
The Vinyl Countdown was the biggest store in Holloway Bay. The building used to be the town’s cinema, that although modest in size by some standards, had still been a far grander, more imperious building that the timber fronted mom-and-pop stores that surrounded it. Now, several owners later, it was in the hands of Lacey, Kelly’s aunt, on her mother’s side, a silver haired reformed hippy, with a taste for embroidered waist coats and colourful shirts.  
Lacey was a neon bright, loving, firework of a personality, and that was reflected in the bright colours and framed teeshirts, from hundreds of different concerts, that decorated her store. The sales desk was in the foyer, the auditorium housed a comprehensive library of second hand music, mostly records, but with book shelves full of sheet music, an array of cassettes, reel to reel tapes, CDs, and… pretty much any other media you care to imagine.  
Up on the gallery level was a small coffee bar, run by Mom’s other sister, the plumper more jovial May, in her many shades of fawn.   
The three women stood on the gallery level, armed with lattes, watching Dusk stand in one of the old fashioned booths (repurposed telephone kiosks) with headphones on, trying one of the records Lacey had chosen in his crash course of the music he was going to learn to love.  
“Is he…” May stretched her words in that way she did when she wanted to ask something, but didn’t quite know the right word. “Erm… okay?”  
“He…” Kelly chose her words carefully. She could never lie to her aunts (as many attempts in her teenage years had proven), but neither did she want to offer the whole truth, that would probably convince them she was trying to lie. “He was in the army, and it caused… problems. He has amnesia about a lot of his life before he served.”  
“Oh!” Lacey purred. “Poor brave little thing.” She narrowed her eyes. “And he’s… English?”  
“He’s one of the Doctor’s patients,” Kelly said.  
“Ah!” The Aunts said, as thought that explained everything.  
Kelly nodded. “He needed a place to stay, and he’s kind of adjusting, and…” She trailed off.  
Dusk was looking up at her, lost in whatever music he was listening to. They shared a smile.  
May slurped her coffee. “And does he know you’re…”  
“Yes, he knows I’m trans,” Kelly said. Echoes of a moment on a distant world, in a distant century, on a ship full of bad memories and nightmares sprang to Kelly’s mind. Of Dusk brushing her tears from her cheek, with a touch that warm, and gentle, and…  
“Single!” May said. “I was going to say ‘single’, you know.”  
“Oh.” Kelly hid behind her coffee. “Why?”  
Lacey chuckled, and raised her voice. “Mister Dusk!”  
Dusk took off his headphones, and looked up at the gallery. “Ma’am?”  
“Nothing dearest,” Lacey said. “As you were.”  
Dusk went back to his music, and Kelly concentrated on her coffee. Dusk looked back a second later, and she smiled down at him, toying with her hair, letting it tickle her fingertips.  
“Because of that,” May said.  
“Yep,” Lacey agreed. “And he’s an alien.”  
Kelly glowered at them. “What makes you say that?”  
May gave her a sorrowful look. “Two cybermen invasions.”  
“Killer mannequins rampaging three times…” Lacey added.  
“Daleks!” May added.  
Dust dropped his headphones and stared up at them.  
“No,” Kelly said in a hurry. “False alarm.”  
Dust nodded, and went back to the music, with considerably less enthusiasm.  
Lacey smiled. “Mostly the Doctor, though.”  
Kelly nodded. “It’s… complicated.” Her phone rang. She glanced down at the screen.  
“That,” May said, “will be the Doctor.”  
“She spoke of the Devil,” Lacey agreed. “He’ll be stuck on the roof. Again.”  
May nodded. “What’s wrong with parking in the alleyway?”  
Kelly answered her phone. “Hello?”  
“Slight problem,” the Doctor said, breezily. “The TARDIS didn’t want to park in the alley again, we had a teensy bit of an argument, and now I’m on the roof.”  
Kelly let out a defeated moan, her shoulders sagging, as she made her way up to the roof door. It squeaked open, scattering some gulls from the roof.  
The Doctor was wearing his favourite plum coat, and blue-grey waistcoat and shirt, the ones that made him look like a refugee from a costume drama. His eyes were bright, his rubbery features drawn into an excited smile, and a fedora tilted at a jaunty angle. He pointed at the fedora, and wriggled his eyebrow. “What do you think? Is this cool? Hats…” The Doctor declared with his usual unwarranted confidence. “Are cool.”  
Kelly grinned. “Where are we off to?”  
He looked hurt. “What makes you think we are off anywhere?”  
Kelly cocked her head. “You have your sonic, your psychic paper, and the boots you don’t mind getting scuffed. Where are we off to.”  
“Oh,” the waltzed into the shop, and feigned innocence. “You don’t want to worry about that. You are probably busy here, rushed off your feet selling records to the good people of Holloway, and shuffling CDs… You wouldn’t be interested in a missing person case, with mysterious deaths, and quite possibly an alien menace.”  
Kelly smiled and waited.  
The Doctor looked back at her. “Would you?”  
  
TWO  
The TARDIS landed with a wheeze and groan of the time engines. Kelly watched the monitor screen. The alley could have been anywhere, with the grotty brick walls and chain link fencing. At the mouth of the alley she could just about glimpse some of the distinctive decorations of San Francisco’s Chinatown.  
Dusk was watching one of the panels of the console, considering two of the dials that Kelly could not even begin to understand. His hands were in the pockets of his combat trousers.  
“Oi!” The Doctor flicked the young man away from the controls.  
“I’m not touching,” Dusk promised.  
“Don’t look so hard,” the Doctor warned him, teasingly. He kicked the console and a drawer opened. The Doctor rummaged through the old comics, tobacco tins, and junk, to find a magnifying glass, that went in his pocket. “Right. Here’s the quick version. Isaac and Julia, two old friends, have been in contact. Their daughter has walked out of her classes and run away to join a sort of commune, which, in itself, was worrying. They are lawyers and they have an investigator on the payroll, who they sent in search of the girl. He apparently found her safe, and happy, able to remain or stay as she wished.”  
“Apparently?” Dusk asked.  
“He died,” the Doctor said. “A few hours later he was found in a locked car, the apparent victim of a wild animal attack.”  
Kelly scoffed. “In a locked car?”  
The Doctor nodded. “Yes. Intriguing, isn’t it?” He smiled brightly. “Luckily Julia has told me about it, and now I’m on the case.” He went bouncing to the front door, and suddenly stopped, opened the door a crack, and peeped out, before stepping carefully out. “Right then,” he sighed letting out a breath. “Let’s get to work shall we?”  
Kelly took Dusk’s hand. “Welcome aboard.”  
*  
Isaac and Julia sat together on the sofa in their office, huddled close.  
The Doctor leant on the desk, spinning his sonic in his fingers. Kelly and Dusk stood by the wall, fascinated by the montage of black and white photographs that covered the wall. There were several of Julia and Isaac twenty years younger, and dressed fashionably, as they hung out with a tall, broad man, with what looked like a perm, striped trousers, and a patchwork coat, who clutched his lapels with an operatic arrogance.  
“Old friends…” Kelly whispered.  
Dusk gave her a knowing look.  
“It was my daughter,” Isaac said, “but there was something… wrong about her. Like it was her voice, but somebody else was telling her what to say. It didn’t have her… warmth.”  
Julia nodded. “She wouldn’t have left college. She was determined to be a doctor, she had all these plans, and… Even if she did, she would have talked to us, she always talked to us.”  
Isaac nodded. “When her boyfriend told me, I thought he was joking.”  
“Boyfriend?” Kelly asked.  
“Mark, another Pre-Med student,” Julia explained. “He was there when she met… them.”  
The Doctor looked over his glasses at the pair. “Them?”  
Isaac winced. “They call themselves the Beloved. They drop out of colleges, or universities, leaving all their money, their possessions, everything behind, to live in one of the Retreats. Most people don’t like them, but we always assumed they were just harmless.”  
Kelly nodded. “I heard of them. They believe the Climate Catastrophe is weeks or months away, and they are going to survive it, right? They will be protected, and ensure the world after the apocalypse is…some kind of paradise?”  
“Interesting,” the Doctor whispered. “And that is where she went? She just dropped everything like a hot brick and walked away?”  
“She changed,” Julia said. “In a few short days, she just changed. We didn’t want to believe it, but…”  
The Doctor nodded. “Don’t worry. I’ll look into it. If I can help, if I can do anything at all…”  
Julia slithered closer to her husband. “And then poor Bob Kramer. He was only meant to work out which of the Retreats she was in. He said the only way to be sure was to put his eyes on her.”  
Dusk looked around. “How many of the Retreats are there?”  
“In the US?” Isaac asked. “Four. Another two in Australia, and there are three in Europe, one in Africa…”  
Kelly mused. “You weren’t sure which one she was in?”  
“We were absolutely sure,” Julia said, “that she was in the one in Washington, where she was studying. We spent days trying to get in there, to find her, but… she wasn’t. They vanished her away. Kramer found her in the Californian compound.”  
The Doctor nodded. “I see.”  
Isaac stared at the Doctor. “She’s my world Doctor. Please. If there is anything we can do, any way we can help…”  
The Doctor looked between Isaac and Julia, with his ancient eyes, letting all his sorrow and strength show through. “We will do everything we can. I promise. Cross my hearts and… well… you know.”  
He was deep in thought, all the way back to the TARDIS.  
“Where are we going?” Kelly asked.  
“The morgue,” the Doctor said. “Does anybody want to stay here, and not look at the dead body?”  
*  
As soon as they stepped out of the TARDIS, Dusk stepped over to the door, to keep a look out through the frosted glass window in the heavy security door. Kelly followed the Doctor through the cool, airy space of the morgue, to the wall of refrigerator units.  
The Doctor took the clipboard from one of the doors, and passed it to Kelly. She nosed through the forms and papers as the Doctor buzzed at the somewhat hefty looking padlock with his sonic. He grunted and adjusted the settings, trying again.  
Kelly looked up, at the padlocks and bolts on the fridge doors. “What’s with all the security? Are they expecting a zombie problem, or something?”  
“Something,” the Doctor said, buzzing open the padlock.  
Kelly gave her friend a playful look. “What did you do?”  
“Make the security requirements on their insurance policies considerably more stringent,” the Doctor said, with a thin smile. “Are you sure you want to see this?”  
Kelly steeled herself, and slid the tray out. Kramer lay on it beneath a plastic sheet. The Doctor lifted it away, and Kelly’s heart froze. The jowly bear of a man had the slack, expressionless appearance of the dead. She did not let herself see more than a glimpse of the savage gnawing bites to the man’s throat. She turned away and flicked through the papers.  
“He called the Kembles, and spoke to them right?” Kelly asked.  
“Yes,” the Doctor said.  
“On a cell phone?” Kelly asked.  
“Yes,” the Doctor confirmed, waving his sonic at the body.  
“No phone was found on him,” Kelly said, “or in the car. They would have looked for it. They would have wanted his In Case Of Emergency number.”  
The Doctor looked up from his work. “That is interesting.”  
“Maybe,” Kelly said, “he had a camera on his phone. Maybe they thought he had taken a picture of something he wasn’t meant to see? To keep it secret.”  
Dusk mulled on that thought.  
The Doctor looked at him. “What are you thinking Dusk?”  
“How it balances,” Dusk said. He held out his hands to illustrate the point. “Here I have the consequences of his death. It is heavy with the certainty that there would be suspicion, that questions would be asked, that the Police will likely visit me with prying questions and a full investigation. All of which increases the chances, the possibility that in a few days, or a few weeks, my secret will be exposed.” He held out his other hand. “And this is the result. The reward of my actions.”  
The Doctor nodded. “You remove the certainty that something has been discovered here and now.”  
Dusk softened his voice. “Trading a life for a few days of secrecy? One has to wonder what was being protected?”  
“Or the death was intended to draw attention.” The Doctor covered the body in the sheet, and rolled it back in the fridge. He walked to the sink and washed his hands. “I think it is time to start at the beginning.”  
  
THREE  
The TARDIS landed in a drizzly, windswept quad. The University residence building was a drab, concrete building with a modern style beginning to look tired around the edges. The Doctor marched ahead of them, his coat flapping. He looked at Kelly. “Go and take a look around Lisa’s room. See if you can talk to her boyfriend or roomie.” He tossed her the psychic paper. “Be very careful.”  
Kelly held the leather wallet. It tingled against her fingertips. “And where will you be?”  
The Doctor drew his magnifying glass from his pocket the way a gunslinger would draw a six shooter. “I’m going to talk to her tutors.”  
Kelly took Dusk’s arm, and lead him into the building, as the Doctor marched off across the quad.  
Lisa’s room was on the third floor. Loud music thumped from behind the door. A ‘Studying: Do Not Disturb’ sign had been hung from the door handle.  
Kelly flashed Dust a smile. “What do you think?”  
“I prefer your aunt’s music,” he said. “I can’t dance for a toffee, but I’d rather lose myself to some gentle romance music.”  
“I think,” Kelly whispered, “they are using it for romance.”  
Dusk’s cheeks reddened. “Oh…”  
Kelly knocked on the door. “Celeste Dane? My name is Kelly. I’m an investigator working for the Kembles. I have some questions about their daughter, Lisa.”  
The music died down.  
A male voice said: “We already talked to your colleague. Mister Kramer. We told him everything.”  
Kelly sighed. “I know, but we have a… new line of enquiry and…”  
“Mark,” Dusk said, “you told the Kembles you were still Lisa’s boyfriend, not Celeste’s.”  
The door opened, and a young couple, entwined in each other’s arms peered out.  
“It wasn’t like that,” Mark said.  
“Okay.” Kelly looked at Dusk. “Why don’t you tell us what it was like.”  
*  
The Doctor sat in the lecture hall with his mug of coffee. Professor Shore, a pleasant faced, grey haired woman, passed the Doctor some files, open at the relevant pages.  
“Lisa is an excellent student,” Shore said. “Even when her life was troubled, when she was distracted and heartbroken, her scores were perfect. She had a real passion for medicine.”  
The Doctor tapped his lips. “She wasn’t just here because it was what her parents wanted?”  
“No!” Shore shook her head. “You can tell when their heart isn’t in it. She loved it here, and loved learning. That was why it surprised me she… I don’t know, just gave up on it all.” Shore sipped her tea. Her brow grew heavy. “Something must have happened though. Not because she ran off to live a different life, but because when she came see me, to quit, the spark had just… gone.”  
“Like she was another person?” The Doctor asked.  
“No. More like… she was just a hollow shell of the person she used to be.”  
“Like…” The Doctor’s tone grew serious. “Like the heart of her had burned out, and left the cold embers in its place?”  
Shore nodded.  
“When did this happen?” The Doctor whispered.  
“Well, I guess the troubles began a few weeks ago,” Shore admitted. “She came to my apartment, broken and fragile, because she thought her boyfriend Mark was… seeing somebody else. She spent some time trying to convince herself he wasn’t even as all the evidence stacked up, until, the night before she quit, she was going to prove to herself that he really was working extra shifts at the club to pay his way…”  
*  
Celeste sighed and wrangled her hands. “It wasn’t meant to happen, or to hurt Lisa, but me and Mark hung out a bit, and got to know each other, and there was just this…pull between us. We didn’t act on it, at first, but then there was that one night, with the movie, and the popcorn, and it was an accident and we should have stopped, but…”  
“We didn’t stop,” Mark said. “And then one night Lisa comes to see me at the bar in the club, but I’m with Celeste, and she sees our kiss, and…” He sighed. “I didn’t lie to her Pa. I just didn’t think he needed to know…everything.”  
Kelly and Dusk shared a look.  
“So…” Dusk said, quietly. “What happened?”  
“She ran out on us,” Celeste admitted. “The next time we saw her, she was here with a pair of… them… the Beloved, filling a bag with underwear and pyjamas, leaving everything else behind.”  
“She didn’t even unplug her phone,” Mark added.  
Kelly followed his gaze to the phone. “Hmm.”  
Dusk looked at them. “Had the Beloved been around before? Were they there that night?”  
“They came to the club,” Mark said. “As often as anybody else. They would just buy drinks, sit together and watch people.”  
Kelly felt her throat tighten. “So… they would have seen what happened?”  
“I wonder,” Dusk whispered.  
“Who else they have been watching?” Kelly asked.  
He nodded.  
*  
The Doctor hurried through the campus. He emerged onto the quad, and ground to a halt. Two beautiful young things, in the blue, barefoot uniform of the Beloved students were leaning on the TARDIS. The Doctor glanced around. There were suddenly more, lurking on every corner, of the paths leaving the quad, and on the steps buildings.   
Couples who had not been there a split second before.  
“That,” the Doctor said, turning around, “is a neat trick. How’s it done? Smoke and mirrors? I was telling old Robert Houdin…”  
A figure loomed behind the Doctor. In the corner of his eye he got a fleeting impression of a blur, an out of focus darkness. He turned, and found himself nose to nose with a vital young man, wearing tight black clothes, a blonde beard, and a shock of pale hair.  
“Timelord,” Scarjester said, in an amiable tone. “At last we meet.”  
The Doctor opened his mouth, finger ready to point, then closed his mouth. “Yes, you must have been waiting… oooh… a good five minutes or so?”  
Scarjester snorted. “On the contrary, I was warned your agents were seeking me days ago. I knew of your interference as soon as the American began asking his questions.”  
The Doctor straightened, and tugged on his lapels. “Warned? By whom?”  
“The girl,” Scarjester said, “joined our endeavour of her own free will. Interfere, and you will suffer the same fate as everybody else on this miserable planet. Step aside now, watch from afar, and I will see no need for us to be enemies.”  
“That’s a kind offer,” the Doctor said, brightly, “but you just seven and a half billion reasons to ask what you think you are doing, and to warn you that not only will I interfere, there is a near certainty of meddling, and quite possibly some being very clever. Unless of course you can show me the ‘fate; of this miserable planet is to be a nice cup of tea and the posh biscuits?”  
Scarjester snorted. “Just know, Doctor, that when the time comes, I gave you the chance to leave with your pet humans, to spare them from being burned.” His smile grew. “Goodbye Doctor.”  
Darkness seemed to fall on the quad in an instant. The sun did not change in the sky, and the lights in the building did not dim, and yet the darkness grew, spreading over the quad, settling a blanket over the TARDIS. The shadows slithered, wrapping around Scarjester shrouding him.  
The Doctor glanced around.  
The pairs of Students were all holding their hands out at him, showing him their palms as though directing a weapon.  
“Ah,” The Doctor whispered. “I see…”  
Within the darkness there was a shape forming, woven from the shadows themselves. Something tall and powerful, more animal than man, with a long, lean, jagged body, claws like talons, teeth like daggers, and eyes that shone red in the darkness.  
The Doctor backed away, as the shadow creature lunged at him, charging forwards on all four.  
The Doctor span on his heels and ran, catching his hat as it fell off his head. The Shadow Hound gave chase, snapping at his heels, easily keeping up with his long strides.  
  
FOUR  
Kelly and Dusk found a coffee stall on their way back to the TARDIS. It was set in a handcart, and the brass and steel of the steam mechanism polished to a mirror sheen. The menu was written in cursive on a chalk board.  
When they reached the front of the line, Dusk gave Kelly a lost look.  
“Two lattes,” she said. “Extra shot, and butterscotch syrup.” As she stood waiting, she looked at Dusk. “What was that you said about the music?”  
“Romance songs or passion songs?” Dusk smiled, awkwardly. “I don’t think the terms translate. I don’t think we have quite the same kinds of music.”  
“You really didn’t dance?” She asked.  
“Well… I have very few memories left, but I was young when I was selected for the service, and I think the Summer Fair when I was messed it all up, was the only time I tried.”  
“Tell me about it,” Kelly said.  
Dusk’s expression softened. “I was… seventeen. It was the last summer before I went to war, maybe a few weeks away at most. It was the Summer Fair, and we were down at the shallows on the river, where it was wide, but only as deep as your toes. There were paper chains and lanterns in the trees on either bank. I was sat with the boys, but no girl was going to ask me to dance, so I just watched. Until one of the teachers spoke to her. She held her hand out to me like I was covered in lice, so I didn’t even kiss it. I just pecked the air above it. We joined the dance in the middle for a romance song, and I put my hands on her hips, just like we were instructed, and looked in her eyes, just like my uncle told me I had to, and… she spent the entire dance chiding me for having no idea what my feet were doing, and for not being a one of the guys with the good chin and the warm smile, and…” He paused as the coffees were delivered. He wrinkled his nose. “Something is wrong. Something is coming.”  
“What…kind of something?” Kelly whispered.  
“Alien.” Dusk touched his head. “It doesn’t belong here.”  
Kelly followed his gaze into the distance.  
The Doctor appeared around the corner, running at a sprint. He went on a lap of the courtyard, chased by a something more hound than human, woven from smoke and shadows.  
“Everybody! Get inside! Now!” Dusk shouted, scattering the handful of customers.  
Kelly grabbed the handcart, and heaved it off the chocks. “Dusk! Help me!”  
The Doctor must have seen her plan. He swerved sharply and darted down a flight of steps. The Shadow Hound followed him, bounding after him with a roar. Kelly put all her weight behind the hand cart, and with Dusk’s help sent it rolling. It bounced down the steps, picking up speed until it slammed into the hound, knocking it off its feet, and slamming it against a wall.  
The Doctor wheeled about, his sonic raised and warbling, the tip glowing green.  
The coffee machine vented high pressure steam, from every tap and valve, in a billowing cloud and banshee hiss. The Shadow Hound squawked and writhed.  
“You don’t like that,” the Doctor shouted, “do you? Too big a shock to the psychic system! You have gone out your way to make an enemy out of me, Scarjester, and you have told me far too much about you. What you should have done, when somebody warned you I was coming your way, was to stop your horrible little plan, and run for the hills to live a good and kind life.”  
The hound made one last howl, that chilled Kelly’s bones, and vanished.  
“What was that?” Kelly asked.  
“A psychic projection,” Dusk answered. “One of terrible power.”  
The Doctor holstered his sonic, pulled on his hat, and looked at his friends. “We need to get to the TARDIS, now. At the lickiest of splits.”  
*  
Scarjester hit the deck of the bridge with a jolt.  
He sat up and pulled the complex spiderweb of wires and electrodes from her head, and let it hang from the ceiling. He growled in fury, and pain. His physical body was far scrawnier and more sickly than the image he projected on Earth, his beard longer and more ragged, his eyes sunken deeper and more intense. His tee shirt and tracksuit bottoms were caked in sweat.  
The air before him shimmered. The Shadow formed from nothing.  
“Even forewarned,” the Shadow snarled, “you have failed to destroy your enemy.”  
“An enemy you manufactured for me?” Scarjester scoffed. “You informed me of the Kemble girl, you showed me her power, you knew of her family’s connections to the Doctor.” Scarjester summoned a console with a thought. It grew from the floor with a ripple of liquid metal. “It doesn’t matter. The world will be reborn a paradise, and if he thinks he can stop me, he can be burned away with everybody, everything, else…”  
The Shadow sighed. “Be sure of those words, my young friend. If you do not destroy him, he will slay you. He will slay your followers. He will reap his revenge.”  
Scarjester slammed his palm onto the console. There was a screech of feedback that distorted the Shadow, and cast it out. “This is my world. I will rule it as I see fit!”  
He traced his fingers over the console, issuing commands.  
Around him, the Starship reconfigured, the spines and armour plates preparing for battle, the vast focussing plates on weapons arrays that flanked the vessel like wings of a moth, flickered as they aligned.  
With shaking fingers Scarjester placed the web of wires and sensors back over his head. He let the white emptiness of the psionic computers flow through him. His mind stretched out into the computers, and through it to the hundreds of thralls he had recruited to his will. “My children, my loves, now is the time for us to create a world worthy of you. Report to your domes. Enter the meditative state, and offer me your willpower.”  
Scarjester was aware of every one of his Thralls responding to his orders. Waking from their sleep, leaving their breakfasts, or evening meals, abandoning shopping carts, all to return to their Retreats and assemble in their domes.  
Compared to his own species the humans were primitive, with primitive minds and frail bodies, but some, one in a thousand, those with the fastest, strongest, deepest minds could be useful, if he could convince themselves to open their mind, just for the moment, for the fraction of a second he required to slice away their will, and take root with his own.  
Their needs and desires were predictable. Offer them what they want, what they need, and their minds would always open.  
If they were content, he would create the need.  
As each entered their trances, and stared into the patterns of the arrays that hung in the domes, as they were lost to the coloured lights reflected off the glass-circuits, the power that flowed through Scarjester, and through the array of his ship built and built.  
Forks of blue energy crackled and sizzled, across the outside of the ship, as the psychic energy in the weapons arrays continued to build.  
The energy built to a corona sphere, boiling hot and ready to fire.  
Sensors blared, as they detected something new, a box, improbably small and impossibly large at the same time, spinning through space, surrounded by energies that Scarjester could not begin to comprehend.  
His lips curled to a smile. “Doctor. There you are.”  
  
FIVE  
The Doctor danced around the console, and set the TARDIS in motion. The time rotors rose and fell, with sighs and groans, as the upper circles began to turn, their lights dancing over the control room.  
Kelly was six paces into the TARDIS before she realised that Dusk was lingering at the door. She glanced back, then hurried up the steps to join the Doctor at the console. “Doctor, what’s going on?”  
The Doctor cranked handles and span a dial, before he looked up at her. “You told me Scarjester believes the world is going to end, and his Beloved are going to survive the destruction, and create a paradise. Correct?”  
“Yes,” Kelly said.  
The Doctor put his glasses on the tip of his nose. “What’s the best way to know when a bomb is going to go off?”  
Kelly gasped. “Set the timer?”  
The Doctor nodded.  
“Then….” Kelly stared into the Doctor’s eyes. “How are a cult going to end the world?”  
It was Dusk who spoke. “With a massive blast of psychic energy, that will destroy the brain functions of every human, who does not happen to be part of Scarjester’s Web.”  
“Web?” Kelly asked.  
The Doctor nodded. “The Beloved. Scarjester is a psychic of tremendous power, as he demonstrated by summoning a Shadow Hound, and through the projections of his Beloved. Moreover he has proven it through how he recruited Lisa. From you told me of her boyfriend and roomie it sounds like he engineered her heartbreak, so he could approach her, and…”  
Kelly sighed. “Talk to her while she was vulnerable. Offer her a hope of a different world, one where she would be loved by her brethren, and probably end up with a partner whose heart beats in time with hers. All the Beloved are happy, and they are always in pairs, and…”  
The Doctor smiled sadly. “All he needed was one instant. For her to wish it was true, for one moment, and to open her mind to him, and he could snuff out her sparks, her drives, her resistance and hijack her mind, enthral her to his will, so she would forever be her own person, but forever beholden and subservient to him. The ultimate slave.”  
Dusk stepped away from the door. “There ways that psychic power can be harnessed and focussed. With every member of the Beloved offering their willpower to his weapon, he could… do catastrophic harm to your world.”  
“What kind of a weapon?” Kelly demanded.  
“A spaceship,” Dusk said. “In high enough orbit, to collect the energy from all over the world, and redirect it.”  
The Doctor continued to throw levers. “The good thing is, it takes time to collect the power, and the energy wave is detectable. I can find it.”  
“When it’s getting powered up?” Kelly asked.  
The Doctor nodded. “Yes.”  
“So…” Kelly sighed. “How long do we get to stop it?”  
“A few seconds,” the Doctor said, closing his eyes to concentrate.  
“Is that enough?” Kelly asked.  
Dust blinked. “Wait. It takes a few moments to charge the first shot, because you are just sucking power into the psionic capacitor. The second shot takes longer, because the people have to build up their strength again. The third even longer.”  
“So…” Kelly glanced at Dusk. “We need to make him miss?”  
The Doctor froze, his hand halfway to a switch. His face fell. “We need to give him another target.”  
“The TARDIS?” Kelly gasped. “Could she take the hit?”  
The Doctor had a pained look in his eyes, an unspoken ‘no’. The silence was palpable.  
Dust put his hand to the door. “I can feel it. The psychic flow, the…alien ship in high orbit.”  
“The energy stream…” The Doctor waved his hand around his head, as though trying to catch a stray thought. “If I parked the TARDIS in that stream then it will shield us from the worst of the blast. If… If…”  
“If?” Kelly asked.  
“If,” Dukt said, “we could stop the shockwaves from feeding back down the stream and burning out the Beloved in the domes.” He tilted his head. “We could use a resonance buffer, but that would…”  
The Doctor lit up. “That would make the stream unstable.”  
“It would give us a few seconds to get clear,” Dusk said.  
“Or…” The Doctor beamed with a bright smile. “To do something clever, like a concentrated pulse to disperse the energy.”  
Dusk stared at the Doctor. “Through the time shields?”  
The Doctor threw him the sonic. “Compensator units!”  
“Compensator units…” Dusk said, lifting an access grill to the crawl space beneath the console.  
The Doctor began throwing switches and barking gobbledygook to Dusk who would parrot it back between bursts from the sonic, and occasional bursts of sparks from some cluster of cables or circuit board.  
“Okay then,” Kelly said. “I’ll just… stand here?”  
*  
Lisa’s body followed the rest of the Beloved to the meditation floor of the Dome. She knelt with her assigned partner, Jake, and gazed up at the ever-changing patterns of the array. Every fibre of her soul was screaming for her to stop, begging her muscles to drag ger one step away, in any direction. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want to see the world die. She didn’t want to lose Mom, or Dad, or anybody. Even her anger at Celeste and Mark didn’t run that deep.  
Every fibre of her soul screamed and raged, but her flesh wore a serene smile, as it stared into the array and let her mind flow into the choir of thoughts feeding the stream of energy flowing out into space.  
The thread of her that was still Lisa, and not Scarjester’s puppet wondered if all the others were screaming in the same horror behind their plastic smiles.  
*  
“That’s it!” The Doctor shouted. “Get clear!”  
Dusk dragged himself out of the crawl space. He stepped over to Kelly and put a hand on her arm. “Are you okay?”  
“Doctor,” Kelly said, her heart fluttering. “Is this going to work?”  
“Probably,” the Doctor said, throwing a switch.  
Kelly gripped the handrail with one hand, and Dusk’s fingers with the other. She gave him a confident smile. “Of course it will. My two best guys figured this out, right?”  
The Doctor flashed her one of his dazzling, mischievous smile, and threw the last switch. “Geronimo!”  
  
SIX  
“Fire!” Scarjester spat, with venom, voicing the command that he broadcast through the systems of the spaceship. Exhilaration swept through Scarjester, the weightless sensation of pure power. The focussed beam fired from the moth shaped spaceship as a lance of pure white, flashing through the cold void of space at the speed of light, and striking the antique TARDIS with a direct hit.  
A dazzling explosion of blinding light radiated from the hit.  
“Die!” Scarjester shouted, as his voice broke into a laugh. “Die!”  
The explosion faded.  
The blue box still spun through space, following the stream of psychic energy, getting closer with every second.  
“No…” Scarjester’s laughter faded into despair. “Oh… no…”  
A pulse wave rippled through the energy stream, breaking it apart, and dispersing it into space. Scarjester summoned a console from the liquid metal, and grabbed it in white knuckles. The wave hit the spaceship like a hurricane, knocking it out of orbit, driving the array out of alignment, dispersing the energy form the arrays.  
The lights in the bridge dimmed, and flickered to red. Sparks showered from the ceiling. Alarms blared.  
Scarjester’s grip on his Thralls slipped.  
*  
Lisa screamed.  
All of them screamed.  
The grip that had strangled her mind for so long loosened, and she fell back into control of her body. Her scream burst from her throat as she rose to her feet, and ran, joining the stampeded of terrified Beloved, out of the dome and into the fresh air. The Beloved hauled the gates open, and ran, scrambling, desperate along the dusty track towards the highway.  
*  
“No!” Scarjester hammered a fist on his headpiece. “No! Come back! Obey me! You must obey me! I will create you a paradise!” He muted the alarms and jabbed at the console. “Damn it! I will be obeyed!”  
A noise filled the spaceship.  
A groaning, wheezing, grating noise of time engines materialising.  
A blue box formed in the corner of the bridge.  
“No!” Scarjester summoned pistol out of the liquid metal of the ship, a long barrelled pistol with a dangerous, waspish look. He pointed it at the TARDIS doors, his grip wavering. “No! I will not let you kill me!”  
“Kill you?” The Doctor asked, striding out of the TARDIS and marching around the bridge. “No. Sorry. That is your means to an end. Not mine.”  
Such a young body, should not have looked so commanding. Such a soft and gentle face should not have carried so many centuries of wrath. Such a gangly awkward forms should not have been so imposing and determined. The Doctor smiled at Scarjester like a tornado about to hit the prairie, like a force of nature.  
“I’m not going to kill you,” the Doctor scoffed, drawing his sonic and pointing it at the console. “I’m going to stop you. Right now, your systems are overloaded, and overheated, the energy unstable. You should be careful, as one false move, and…”  
The sonic fire, warping and distorting the displays on the console. Outside the weapon arrays shattered, the reflecting plates dissolving into splinters, and drifting away into the depths of space.  
“There,” the Doctor said. “No more mind control, no more weapons, and no more world domination.”  
“You are stranding me here with nothing?” Scarjester wailed.  
“Stranded? No.” The Doctor dropped the sonic in his pocket. “You have your life, you have a spaceship, and you have the whole universe in which to find something better to be. Now, of course, I’m watching you, but that will only be a problem for you, if you decide to be a problem for somebody else.” The Doctor walked back to the TARDIS, and doffed his hat. “What happens next, Scarjester, is entirely up to you.”  
The TARDIS faded with the same bellowing whale song with which it had arrived.  
*  
Lisa and the Beloved shuffled and staggered into the lot of the diner, and the neon lit forecourt of the gas station. Lisa dug her small change from her pocket, and stepped over to the phone booth. She hesitated as she was about to drop the coin in, her mind racing as she tried to decide what she should say, what she could possibly say, when her Mom answered.  
As she stared across the road, hoping for inspiration, a box, a blue box, the box that belonged in all her parents’ crazy, stupid, impossible stories, faded into existence. A couple stepped out. He was tall, fair, and dorky, with a weathered face and a kind smile. She was perky and elfin, with a unicorn tee shirt, untamed hair, and bright grin that stretched between her dimples.  
“Hey!” The woman shouted. “Did you guys want a lift anywhere?”  
Lisa choked on something that was almost a laugh, and almost a sob. “No way! Nooooo way!”  
*  
Later, much later, Kelly curled against the Doctor on the gallery level of the shop. Her aunts sat on the far side of the table, plying the Doctor with hot chocolates and cakes. He was wearing the fez again. They were discussing the comparative merits of bands in the seventies, and had long ago escaped the bounds of Kelly’s knowledge into folk music and experimental music.  
Down on the ground floor, in the old auditorium, Dusk was catching up with the homework Lacey had set him, standing by a booth, headphones on, a slightly confused frown on his face. Kelly came to a decision. She slipped out from under the Doctor’s arm, and down the curving staircase. She rummaged in the stock for her Mom’s favourite LP, and dropped it on the turntable.  
The needle bit, and the soft, swaying, melody echoed around the shop floor.  
Dusk took off his headphones and stepped from the booth.  
Kelly smiled, suddenly nervous. She bobbed in a courtesy and held out a hand to Dusk.  
He took her fingers and stared at her. “Are you sure?”  
“Please?” She asked.  
He kissed her knuckles and stepped forwards, a little too starched, and a little too awkward, as he lay his hands on her sides. She stepped closer, letting her head rest on his shoulder and looked up at him. His touch softened, as his arms closed around her. She held him, and listened to the quickening of his heart, and the catching of his breath.  
She closed her eyes and let the moment last long after the song.


End file.
